John Taylor Gatto: A Friend Remembered
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“I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.”
John Taylor Gatto
This month marks two years since we lost our beloved John Taylor Gatto.
John was a man with a brave heart.
As you probably know, he was named New York State Teacher of the Year one time and New Your City Teacher of the Year three times, and then he suddenly quit.
He quit the public school system for good. If you haven't read John's op-ed announcing his decision, it was published by the Wall Street Journal in 1991.
What struck me about that moment in John's life was that he was older and nearing the time when he could have retired with a comfortable pension for himself and his wife. Yet, he quit anyway.
Courage. To have the courage to live according to our principles, not too many of us can do that.
Why He Quit
Late into his career, John discovered that, in the name of education, public school was harming children, and that was why he quit.
“Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.”
Some of us work at professions that are harmful to others, and we learn how to justify what we do so living with ourselves is not too unbearable.
Rare is the person who will risk the security of his livelihood because of a principle he chooses to live by. Rare is the man who will leave a distinguished career for the sake of not harming others. John Taylor Gatto was a rare man.
Our First Meeting
When I met John for the first time in 2003, he greeted me with a huge, warm, Italian smile. He greeted everyone that way. I had invited him to be a guest speaker at an event on education that my organization was hosting.
Allow me to share with you a reflection that weekend that has remained with me these past years.
I picked John up the morning of the event to take him to the venue at UC Berkeley. After settling himself inside my car, he confessed that he'd been up until 3:00 a.m. rewriting his talk. He showed me his pages of lines drawn through sentences in black ink and tiny scribbles of notes piled upon one another in the margins.
The talk he was scheduled to give, however, was the same talk he is best known for, The History of Modern Education. I wondered what he meant when he said he had been awake half the night rewriting it?
As he delivered his speech, I came to understand his meaning. He had been rewriting it because he gave the talk anew each time. He never delivered his speech the same way twice, as so many public speakers do. Taking the time to refresh his talk, John personalized it for each audience.
There is nothing worse than hearing someone deliver a lecture they've delivered a thousand times before so that even the jokes sound rehearsed. A good teacher knows this, and a great teacher practices it. John was a great teacher.
John refused to give us anything less than his very best each time he stood before us.
It was the ability to see life through fresh eyes even when the eyes were old, to learn as much as he could about many things, not even stopping for death, to experience the ordinary occurrences in life as if they were extraordinary, to encounter each human being as the most precious person he had ever met, and to believe in the magnificent potential of the human spirit that made John such a singular and sublime individual.
There was a vibrancy to John Taylor Gatto, and one felt more alive just from being in his presence.
“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your roadmap through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.”
October 25, 2020 was the exact day of the second year of his passing. Please take a moment to say a prayer not only for a truly great man but also for a man who affected so many of our lives in such profound ways.
We are people who refuse to accept the status quo for ourselves and for our children, as John inspired us to do. As we work hard to educate our children and to help them live more meaningful lives, let us not forget that we each carry a little of John Taylor Gatto with us.
May his spirit live on.
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Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education. Using her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
